Research in 1970 vaulted Becán to prominence on the landscape of great Maya centers. Mapping, excavation, and ceramic stratigraphy revealed that its enigmatic earthwork, first recorded archaeologically in 1934, was a fortification built at the end of the Preclassic period. Large-scale warfare thus unexpectedly turned out to have very deep roots in the Maya lowlands. The site's wider implications remained obscure, however, in the absence of dates and other inscriptions. The ever-increasing dependence on historical and iconographic information in our narratives, along with the invisibility of its Preclassic buildings and plazas, unfortunately marginalized Becán. Some colleagues even claimed that we have misinterpreted both the nature of the earthworks (not fortifications) and their dating (not Preclassic). We rehabilitate Becán by dispelling these claims and by showing that standard archaeological evidence, contextualized in what we know today, has much to say about Becán's role in lowland culture history. We identify intervals of crisis when the earthwork remained useful long after it was originally built, especially during the great hegemonic struggles of the Snake and Tikal dynasties, and introduce new ceramic and lithic data about Becán's settlement history and political entanglements. Our most important message is that inscriptions and iconography, for all their dramatic chronological detail and historical agency, must always be complemented by standard fieldwork.

The end of the Classic period was a tumultuous moment in Maya history, not only because the power of many dominant political centers waned, but because the ways in which elites and non-elites related to each other were increasingly called into question. To understand the nature of changing social relations in the southern Maya lowlands during this time, this study examines the distribution and provenance of decorated ceramics during the Late Classic (ca. a.d. 600–810) and Terminal Classic (ca. a.d. 810–950/1000) periods from the archaeological site of Ucanal, Peten, Guatemala. Comparisons of ceramics from different households across the site reveal that differences in access to decorated and imported ceramics decreased between these periods, suggesting that socioeconomic distinctions leveled out over time. In turn, chemical analysis of ceramics using a portable X-ray fluorescence instrument reveals that the site shifted its political-economic networks, with greater ties to the Petexbatun and Usumacinta regions and continued ties with the Upper Belize Valley.

This introduction to the Special Section provides a summary of our current understanding of the first humans and the first Maya in these regions and presents seven articles that examine these critical periods from varied, intersecting perspectives. The Introduction begins with a brief history of early preceramic research (primarily in northern Belize) and provides a current chronology for the Paleoindian, Archaic, and Early Preclassic periods. The Paleoindian and Archaic (ca. 11,500–900 b.c.) periods are discussed in terms of the origins of the first peoples in these regions, lithic technology, subsistence, and early ritual. Next, a summary of archaeological evidence for the transition to the first villages (ca. 1200–800 b.c.) is provided, with examinations of a horticultural lifestyle, the earliest ceramics, increased socio-economic complexity, new ideology and ritual practices, and developing social inequality. Proto-Mayan and Mayan languages—their dating, origin, and early lexicon—are discussed in relation to the first Maya. Material culture and language are explored with regard to conceptions of Maya culture.

Data from rock shelters in southern Belize show evidence of tool making, hunting, and aquatic resource exploitation by 10,500 cal b.c.; the shelters functioned as mortuary sites between 7600 and 2000 cal b.c. Early Holocene contexts contain stemmed and barbed bifaces as part of a tradition found broadly throughout the neotropics. After around 6000 cal b.c., bifacial tools largely disappear from the record, likely reflecting a shift to increasing reliance on plant foods, around the same time that the earliest domesticates appear in the archaeological record in the neotropics. We suggest that people living in southern Belize maintained close ties with neighbors to the south during the Early Holocene, but lagged behind in innovating new crops and farming technologies during the Middle Holocene. Maize farming in Belize intensified between 2750–2050 cal b.c. as maize became a dietary staple, 1000–1300 years later than in South America. Overall, we argue from multiple lines of data that the Neotropics of Central and South America were an area of shared information and technologies that heavily influenced cultural developments in southeastern Mesoamerica during the Early and Middle Holocene.

The fourth millennium b.p. in the Maya lowlands provides an interesting case, with mobile, aceramic peoples documented, while ceramic-using villagers lived in other parts of Mesoamerica. Rather than ask why ceramic containers and village life took so long to reach the Maya lowlands, the question can be inverted to posit that a mixed horticultural-foraging adaptation was so effective that it persisted longer than elsewhere. I propose that the so-called 4.2 ka b.p. event was the ultimate cause of increased sedentism and the first adoption of ceramic containers in a limited number of regions of Mesoamerica. My musings are grounded in the comparisons of data from the Soconusco region of southern Mexico and evidence from northern Belize at Colha and Pulltrouser Swamp, as well as the Freshwater Creek drainage. I assume that proximate behavior must account for local adaptations and different rates of change in each region of Mesoamerica. Therefore, regional adaptation in northern Belize during the Late Archaic period provides the evidence with which to reconstruct local adaptation. Excavations and regional reconnaissance document a distinctive orange soil horizon at Progresso Lagoon associated with patinated chert tools and an absence of ceramics. Stone tool assemblages from the preceramic components of three sites in the region indicate a spatial separation of tool use and resharpening at island versus shore. Starch grains recovered from these stone tools indicate that preceramic peoples in northern Belize harvested maize and several other domesticated plant species. These data are consistent with local paleoenvironmental studies that document an extended period of horticultural activity during the fifth and fourth millennia b.p. prior to the adoption of ceramics. Lithic assemblages and associated dietary information from multiple sites provide glimpses of the data necessary to reconstruct Late Archaic period adaptation from a single locale. Such data will be required to understand the proximate causes for the transition to a more settled, village life.

This article presents a review of the earliest known skeletal remains in the Maya area, which are found in submerged caves in Mexico and rock shelters in Belize and date to the Paleoindian and Archaic periods. While few in number, several of these individuals have been the focus of intensive analyses, providing an emerging picture of life in the region before the transition to agriculture and settled village communities.

The recovery of macro- and microbotanicals, along with the study of chemical residues, allows us to shed light on a number of anthropological issues concerning ancient populations. This article reviews the data available to date on the plants used by preceramic peoples during the Archaic period and by the Early to Middle Preclassic Maya across the central Maya lowlands. Archaeobotanical data suggest that early preceramic populations took advantage of their ecologically rich natural environment by gathering a range of wild foods and by cultivating domesticates such as maize, manioc, and chili peppers, a pattern that seemingly continued into the Early to Middle Preclassic, as the Maya settled into village life and left more visible traces of modifications to their natural environment in the form of canals and terraces. This region is of particular interest with regard to the development of sociopolitical complexity, as mobile hunter-gatherers used domesticates during the millennia that preceded the onset of sedentary life. These early populations set the stage for patterns of plant use that endured through time, but also across space in the Maya region.

Investigations concerning the earliest Maya have been of archaeological interest for many decades. Northern Belize serves as a valuable region for researching and understanding early Maya developments. In particular, the ancient Maya site of Colha in northern Belize is a focal point of some early developments beginning in the Archaic period. Select resources in the region, especially in the chert-bearing zone, clearly had been of great interest and attraction to populations extending back into Paleoindian and Archaic times, as well as the Maya period for Colha and other sites near the resource zone. With the appearance of pottery-producing settled villages is the common assertion that Maya societies are in place around 1000 b.c. Recent studies have identified much earlier occupants in the region with significant cultural developments, including semi-permanent occupation and horticulture occurring in the Late Archaic at approximately 3400 b.c. It seems plausible, perhaps likely by our assessment, that these Late Archaic people (or aceramic populations) may have been the earliest Maya communities. Factors of defining communities, aspects of horticulture, and the transition from the Archaic into the Preclassic are reviewed in consideration of—just who were the earliest Maya?

The transition from the Late Archaic to the Late Early Formative period witnessed profound changes in the Maya lowlands. In addition to the establishment of the first settlements and agrarian communities, this critical phase of cultural development heralded the introduction of ceramics, saw changes in lithic technology, gave rise to inter-regional trade and exchange, and witnessed the introduction of a complex symbolic system expressed on portable objects. In this article, we synthesize data collected over the past several decades by various archaeological projects in western Belize to provide an overview of the cultural changes that unfolded during the Late Archaic to Late Early Formative period in the Upper Belize River Valley. We also provide evidence indicating that it was during this critical transitional period that we begin to see the establishment of several cultural traditions that became uniquely lowland Maya.

This article presents a review of the earliest Maya skeletal remains thus far found, including a list of 398 burials dating to the Early (1800–900 b.c.) and Middle Preclassic periods (900–300 b.c.) and adjacent regions. These sites are spread throughout the Maya region and the data allow basic descriptive syntheses about early mortuary behavior and aspects of health and diet. Poor preservation and differences in scoring and reporting severely limit the scope of interpretation possible at this point, but it is hoped that this review stimulates coordinated research into the biology of early groups.